Special – Saints Row IV: How The Saints Save Christmas

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Every great pop culture entity needs a Christmas special. I mean, who doesn’t love seeing their favorite characters shoehorned into an emotionally hollow, often obligatory plot that ends with a Very Valuable Lesson about family or selflessness or time travel ghosts or something? It’s a tradition nearly as old as Walmart itself. But OK, in fairness, some Christmas specials aren’t entirely terrible, and if anyone can elbow drop the cliche in the groin until it slithers back into the bowels of its holly, jolly dungeon of soulless commercialism, it’s Saints Row. Saints Row IV‘s next DLC episode, How The Saints Save Christmas, will almost certainly bash the very concept of Christmas specials’ head against the fourth wall until both are naught but jagged shards. Dash through the snow below for details.

The Saints? Saving Christmas through a series of highly referential hijinks? “Preposterous!” you might bellow. I would then a) wonder if you’ve ever actually played a Saints Row game and also if you even know what the word preposterous means and b) point you in the direction of this plot synopsis:

“Santa is trapped inside the simulation, but the Scrooge-like boss of the Third Street Saints can’t muster enough festive spirit to save him. Can the Saints help the boss discover the true meaning of the season in time? A holiday classic for the whole family.”

It’s true. Saints Row IV is the one game I plan on showing to my entire family this holiday season. My largely conservative, Texas-based family. I am expecting good reactions!

How The Saints Save Christmas is comprised of three quests and multiple holiday-themed weapons/vehicles, and it will be out on December 11th for $6.99. Christmas, meanwhile, will be out on December 25th for all of your money and most of your sanity. I don’t hate it, but the characters could be better and the aesthetic design is terribly repetitive. And oh jeez, the microtransactions. 7/10

24 Comments

I’ve never thought of this before, but if you live in America, Nathan, does that mean you have to get up at like 2 AM every day to post in concordance with GMT? Or do you write all your posts the day before and then a bot posts them?

Hah! I’ll get Christmas a good 30 hours before you ‘Murricans! How do you like them oceans now, bitches? Okay, most of those hours are because of cultural differences, but Santa comes here first, y’all!

I recently discovered something: I actually miss my Saints Boss a bit. That never happens, with any character! But I saw a SR video on youtube in which the boss had the same voice as mine, and I felt a little sad for a moment that I couldn’t play more with her (well, I could run through the streets and murder people to “What is love?” some more, but that’s just not the same as playing through the missions).

I like the Christmas Dubstep theme. It’s really fun to use. There is also this really awesome original tune that only plays the first time you do the naughty or nice mini-game. I managed to record the song so I could listen to it at any time.